Thinking of Joining Roll20? Lock In Your Sub Now!

Roll20 is increasing its monthly sub from $4.99 to $5.99 per month, but you can lock in the lower price by signing up before July 1st.

• Monthly Plus subs go from $4.99 to $5.99l Annual Plus subs go from $49.99 to $59.99
• Monthly Pro subs go from $9.99 to $10.99; Annual Pro subs go from $99.00 to $109.99

If you subscribe before July 1st, you get locked in to the old price for two years. I can't promise you'll be as good-looking as the folks in the screenshot, though!

Roll20 Announcement – Price Increase · Roll20 Blog

blog.roll20.net

 

[BigZebra]

I don't know why everyone else hates it, but I hate them because all of their default themes are difficult for me to read and even if I could find one that was remotely viable for me, themes are selected on the game level by the GM-- and after repeated inquiries, I have been informed that this level of GM authorship is more important than a basic minimum of accessibility.

It's a garbage product from a garbage company, and I will happily dissuade anyone I can from giving them money.

edit: There are a lot of things that aren't great about Roll20 and people keep trying to talk me into switching to one VTT or another, but at the end of the day, the fact that I can read its output by default and it isn't a goddamned knife-fight to be able to maintain a clean user interface that isn't exhausting means Roll20 is going to win. Since I've never actually met another group of highly intellectual VTT developers that understands this basic concept, Roll20 gets my patronage by default.

I agree one of the things not terribly good in FG is the output in the chat window. R20 can do more in that area. But pretty much all else are better it seems. R20’s sheets system seems so archaic and the 3.5 are almost unusable compared to FG.

Also why are they a garbage company? Really curios about that. Are they a garbage company because they don’t make a system to your liking? Or is it more than just internet rhetoric?

 

[DammitVictor]

Also why are they a garbage company? Really curios about that. Are they a garbage company because they don’t make a system to your liking? Or is it more than just internet rhetoric?

It's not a matter of whether or not they produce a system I like-- it's the fact that they don't consider other people with visual or reading difficulties, perhaps more severe than my own, important enough to produce a system they can use. That is, in my opinion, entirely sufficient to justify calling them a "garbage company" and I might ask you to take a moment and reflect if you really want to argue that it isn't.

 

[BigZebra]

It's not a matter of whether or not they produce a system I like-- it's the fact that they don't consider other people with visual or reading difficulties, perhaps more severe than my own, important enough to produce a system they can use. That is, in my opinion, entirely sufficient to justify calling them a "garbage company" and I might ask you to take a moment and reflect if you really want to argue that it isn't.

No, I can totally appreciate that. Unfortunately if they don't consider accessibility a feature. Sorry to hear that.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

to maintain a clean user interface that isn't exhausting means Roll20 is going to win. Since I've never actually met another group of highly intellectual VTT developers that understands this basic concept, Roll20 gets my patronage by default.

It's kind of funny that I find Roll20's user interface as exasperating, exhausting, and something I have to regularly fight with just to perform basic functionality.

 

[DammitVictor]

It's kind of funny that I find Roll20's user interface as exasperating, exhausting, and something I have to regularly fight with just to perform basic functionality.

Well, I'm not trying to argue that they're great. My entire complaint is that the only reason I use Roll20 is that it's the only VTT that I can use; I wish that this were not the case, because all of the reasons people give me for switching... sound really convincing and I wish I could try them, but there simply isn't any feature powerful or convenient enough to make up for the fact that I can't read the interface.

 

[jaynay27]

Well, I'm not trying to argue that they're great. My entire complaint is that the only reason I use Roll20 is that it's the only VTT that I can use; I wish that this were not the case, because all of the reasons people give me for switching... sound really convincing and I wish I could try them, but there simply isn't any feature powerful or convenient enough to make up for the fact that I can't read the interface.

As much as I do love Fantasy Grounds, I was surprised that the new unity version kept the same UI.
I get that they wanted a feeling of continuity, but I saw this as a bit of a missed opportunity to modernise the UI, which perhaps could have had the benefit of improved accessibility...I guess we will never know.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Well, I'm not trying to argue that they're great. My entire complaint is that the only reason I use Roll20 is that it's the only VTT that I can use; I wish that this were not the case, because all of the reasons people give me for switching... sound really convincing and I wish I could try them, but there simply isn't any feature powerful or convenient enough to make up for the fact that I can't read the interface.

The Foundry has free modules with alternate UIs. Not sure if any of the ones currently on offer would work for you, but someone with the skillset could probably (if they haven’t already) put together a UI module that would allow users to customize it themselves just by selecting options in a menu.

 

[TheSword]

I'm a player in Roll20 and a DM in Foundry. Foundry does take a bit more tinkering and setup but the add-ons are very cool. It just does so much more than roll20. And for those not wanting to pay for a cloud hosted service, you can run your server locally on your own PC. The only downside to that is your players can't login to update their character sheets when your server isn't running.

I’m not a novice but I think ‘tinkering’ is a massive understatement. There’s no way I’m asking other people to download shareware to their laptops in order to link to me as a server as one of the references gave me.

Also can you summarize what Foundry does that is so much better? I can see transitional lighting and player controlled doors. Is there so much more?

 

[Morrus]

We use Roll20 in our Thursday night PF2E game, and it's just fine. The GM occasionally has to fife with layers a bit, but it basically does everything we need it to do (we do the video chat separately by Zoom.

I'm also in the process of getting Awfully Cheerful Engine Roll20-ready, so it's interesting to see it from the other side too.

 

[Retreater]

Why the FG hate? What am I missing?

A preference of VTTs is highly subjective, like most things in this world.
What I can say from my experience is that I had FG for years and it still feels clunky, hard to read, primitive.
When my only experience with VTTs had been FG (and Maptools back in the early 2000s), I thought gaming during the pandemic would be impossible. But I got on Roll20, learned how to run a game in minutes. I'm using it sometimes 4 times a week to run games.
FG has created entire webinar series, have staff to teach you to run practice games, and many other tools to help. That's nice, but it still hasn't helped me. And I don't think I should need to sign up for their "college" (as they call it) to learn how to run a game. Just give me a platform that can get out of the way.
Roll20 does things good enough. It doesn't have too much automation to add layers of difficulty. I just wish they'd add more content to Pathfinder. But if you're playing 5e, I can't imagine anything else you'd want.